-
Screening films on the peripheries: ‘cine-service’ in ‘red chums’ for Indigenous audiences in the rural Soviet North Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Caroline Damiens
This article looks at film exhibition targeting Indigenous audiences in the rural Soviet North. It draws on the case of ‘red chums’ (or red ‘iaranga’, or ‘yurt’, etc. depending on the target popula...
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-03-29 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
-
Deepfaking the ‘Acceptable Chechen’: Orientalist form and homonationalist worlding in David France’s Welcome to Chechnya Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Misha Irek (yakovlev)
This article provides an interventionist critique of David France’s documentary Welcome to Chechnya (2020), from a queer decolonial perspective. This film claims to expose the brutal violence again...
-
Leonid Gaidai’s full-length debut, or ‘The Accusatory Cinema of Thaw’: the history of the transformation of the script The Dead Affair into the film A Groom from the Other World (1958), followed by the literary script The Dead Affair Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Nina Sputnitskaia
The introductory article to this publication chronicles the production of Leonid Gaidai’s film A Groom from the Other World: from the idea of the script for the satirical comedy The Dead Affair to ...
-
Everyday representations of war in late modernity Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Adrienne Harris
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
-
Pro-dvizhenie: advanced Russian through film and media Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-14 Elena Prokhorova
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
-
The film comedies of Leonid Gaidai: student works and the formation of a style Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-14 Maksim Kazyuchits
This article studies the early stage of the career of the well-known Soviet and Russian comedy filmmaker Leonid Gaidai, notably the training period at the All-Union Institute of Cinema (VGIK), on t...
-
The Eisenstein Universe: unveiling new dimensions in film, art, and thought Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-14 Patrícia Castello Branco
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
-
How the Soviet Jew Was Made Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Stephen M. Norris
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
-
‘Inside the belly of the whale’: epistemology and aisthesis in the work of Aleksei German Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Livan Garcia-Duquesne
Considering the relative dearth of English-language scholarship on Aleksei Iu. German’s work, this essay attempts to provide a totalising account of German’s filmography, elaborating on the themes ...
-
Globalising the steppe: environment and identity in Ermek Tursunov’s Tengrist parables Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Elena Monastireva-Ansdell
Kazakhstani cinematic discourse on the environment has evolved from prioritising pressing nation-building and geopolitical objectives in the immediate post-independence era to proposing alternative...
-
Dreaming of space: a premonition of Ernest Hemingway Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Frederick H. White
This article concentrates on the cultural mythology of Ernest Hemingway implicitly inscribed into Aleksei Uchitel’ and Aleksandr Mindadze’s Dreaming of Space (2005). This film offers a presentiment...
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023)
-
Queer women of Kantemir Balagov: subjectivities in extreme contexts Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Vlad Strukov
The discussion focuses on two films – Closeness (2017) and Beanpole (2019) – by Kantemir Balagov, and is concerned with interrogating the possibilities of queer-crip dynamic in contemporary Russian...
-
Introduction: ‘Different (Everyone is So)’: conceptualisations of Russian and Russophone queer cinema in the twenty-first century Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Vlad Strukov
In the introduction I conceptualise cinematic narratives of difference and queerness, and the ways in which the queer lens has been used in contemporary Russian and Russophone cinema to interrogate...
-
The queer parable and the gender normativity of ‘traditional values’: Aleksei Chupov and Natal’ia Merkulova’s The Man Who Surprised Everyone (2018) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Katerina Suverina
The article examines how the ideology of ‘traditional values’ and related ‘special’ gender normativity are represented in contemporary Russophone cinema. By analysing the film-parable The Man Who S...
-
Haunted dreams: fantasies of adolescence in post-Soviet culture Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Laura Todd
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023)
-
Queering the Mainstream: Anna Melikian’s About Love (2015) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Rachel Morley
About Love (2015), Anna Melikian’s fourth film, is her first attempt at mainstream cinema. Mimicking the form of an almanac film, it comprises five apparently discrete but intimately interconnected...
-
Nabokov Noir: cinematic culture and the art of exile Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Ewa Mazierska
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023)
-
Film adaptations of Russian classics. Dialogism and authorship Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-16 Marina Rojavin
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023)
-
Dlinnaia doroga v Kanny: Mikhail Kalatozov [The Long Road to Cannes: Mikhail Kalatozov] Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Anthony Anemone
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023)
-
Representations of drag queens in contemporary Russian film and web-based reality television Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-08 Volha Isakava
The article explores representations of drag queens in contemporary Russian film and reality television shows through an analysis of Feliks Mikhailov’s feature film Jolly Fellows (2009) and the web...
-
Queering Russian cinema as a community-building practice Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Olga Andreevskikh
LGBTQ media discourses in contemporary Russia have been extensively researched from the perspectives of media and queer studies. Scholars have theorised whether ‘queerness’ can be appropriated from...
-
Monsters with family and tradition: queering family in Central Russia’s Vampires Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-07-30 Tatiana Klepikova
This article analyses the web series Central Russia’s Vampires (streaming platform Start, since 2021) as a site of articulating queerness on screen in contemporary Russia. I zoom in on the layers o...
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-05-21 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Cinema and soft power: Configuring the national and transnational in geo-politics Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
The script form in Soviet and Russian film studies Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Elizaveta V. Prokhorova
ABSTRACT This article explores the development of the script form in Soviet/Russian scriptwriting, which has drawn particular attention in the 1920s, when a polemic arose among film theorists and practitioners concerning the ‘iron’ and ‘emotional’ script. Sergei Eisenstein and Aleksandr Rzheshevskii, among others, favoured the emotional script with its expressive record of the future film to the rigid
-
Rozhdenie ‘Stalkera’: Popytka rekonstruktsii Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Alexander Prokhorov
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Absurd justice: documenting the show trial in Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (2018) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Daniel Schwartz
ABSTRACT This article interrogates the material history and conceptual origins of Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (2018), an archival documentary that re-edits restored footage and deleted scenes from Iakov Posel’skii’s 1931 propaganda documentary 13 Days, one of the Soviet Union’s earliest sound films. Shelved in state archives soon after its release, Posel’skii’s documentary chronicles the infamous Industrial
-
Nonverbal corporeal signs in the works of Aleksandr Sokurov’s students Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Polina M. Stepanova
ABSTRACT Nonverbal semiotics offers new approaches to the analysis of corporeal codes that define cultural interpretations, social communications and creative processes of art works. Grigorii Kreidlin has singled out three groups of nonverbal corporeal signs, which help analyse more concisely the embodiment in contemporary cinema of a protagonist who, at the level of body techniques (according to Mauss)
-
Designing Russian cinema: The production artist and the material environment in silent era film Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Marshall Deutelbaum
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Fedor Bondarchuk: Stalingrad (KinoSputnik 6) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Ian Garner
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Andrei Tarkovsky: Ivan’s Childhood (KinoSputnik 4) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Natasha Synesiou
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Aleksei Balabanov: Brother (Kino Sputnik 5) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Frederick H. White
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 2, 2023)
-
Creating the Polish enemy on the Soviet screen, 1925-1939 Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Stefan Lacny
ABSTRACT This article examines the presentation of Polish characters in Soviet cinema from 1925 to 1939. It argues that the many films made on the so-called ‘Polish theme’ in these years reveal a persistent Soviet anxiety towards Poland, which appears as a potential aggressor representing a military and ideological threat to the USSR in its western borderlands. Through close analysis of selected films
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2023)
-
Screening Russian youth: An introduction Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Jenny Kaminer
ABSTRACT This introduction outlines the scope of the cluster presented in this issue (17.1) of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema on the representation of youth on late-Soviet and Russian screens. It connects the arguments made in the three contributions by Irina Souch, Vadim Mikhailin, and Galina Belyaeva; by Laura Todd; and by Emily Schuckman Matthews, concerning the emergence on screen of the
-
Soviet science fiction cinema and the space age: memorable futures Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Boris Stepanov
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2023)
-
Russian TV series in the era of transition: genres, technologies, identities Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Ellina Sattarova
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2023)
-
The waning of the young sincere hero in Averbakh and Maslennikov’s The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Irina Souch, Vadim Mikhailin, Galina Belyaeva
ABSTRACT The article discusses the 1967 film The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin, directed by Il’ia Averbakh and Igor’ Maslennikov. The film belongs to the Thaw period of Soviet filmmaking, defined by cineastes’ pledge to sincerity. This idea aligned with the cultural transformations launched by the Khrushchev administration at the end of the 1950s, which encompassed radical changes in the attitudes
-
Youth as a ‘priority theme’: Socio-political impetus and the evolution of films for youth in Russia and the Soviet Union Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-01-16 Laura Todd
ABSTRACT This article examines the evolution of ‘films for children and youth’ from the early 1970s to 2021. The genre-category was one of the most significant in the Soviet Union, serving a political, social and artistic function as a mediator of Soviet values and norms for the youngest generation. For most of its history, critical literature has focused on the films ‘for children’ rather than youth
-
The future is (still) bleak: the lives of youth on Russia’s margins in Vasilii Pichul’s Little Vera and Nataliia Meshchaninova’s The Hope Factory Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2023-01-03 Emily Schuckman Matthews
ABSTRACT Through a comparative analysis of the films Little Vera by Vasilii Pichul (1988) and The Hope Factory by Nataliia Meshchaninova (2014), the article examines the representation of youth living at the margins of Soviet/Russian society economically, socially and geographically. These films are connected not only by their narrative focus on young people coming of age amid political change, but
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-12-05 Birgit Beumers
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 16, No. 3, 2022)
-
From children’s cinema to documentalist aesthetics: Antarctica, Faraway Country by Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-11-04 Maksim Kazyuchits, Nina Sputnitskaia
ABSTRACT This article forms the introduction to the publication of the script Antarctica, faraway country. The script was written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei (Mikhalkov)-Konchalovsky during their student days and completed in the early 1960s; however, the script was never realised and belongs to the category of ‘unrealised scripts’. The article traces the origins of the idea for the script and places
-
Esfir Shub: pioneer of documentary filmmaking Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-09-18 Anne Eakin Moss
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 16, No. 3, 2022)
-
The film script as oral narrative of personal experience in Aleksandr Rzheshevskii’s oeuvre Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Sergei Ogudov
ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the study of the film scripts by Aleksandr G. Rzheshevskii (1903–1967). In contrast to the concept of the ‘emotional scenario’, which emphasises the textual structure, this article suggests a reading of his scripts in connection with the problems of an oral narrative of personal experience. Such an approach allows us to consider important creative principles for
-
The silent Il’inskii: mask and its affects Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-08-18 Olga Davydenko
ABSTRACT Igor’ Il’inskii (1901–1987) was a celebrated Soviet comic actor, whose work in silent-era cinema has often been underestimated. Even in defining the specific features of his character acting and his screen mask/s, no single view has been formulated among film scholars. This article aims to reveal the main principles of Il’inskii’s acting in Soviet films of the silent period in order to define
-
Feeling Revolution: Cinema, Genre, and the Politics of Affect Under Stalin Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-08-17 Claire Knight
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 16, No. 3, 2022)
-
Russian Symbolism in Search of Transcendental Liquescence: Iconizing Emotion by Blending Time, Media, and the Senses Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Anna Kovalova
Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema (Vol. 16, No. 3, 2022)
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-05-31 Birgit Beumers
(2022). Editorial. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 87-87.
-
Sergueï Loznitsa. Un cinéma à l’épreuve du monde Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Birgit Beumers
(2022). Sergueï Loznitsa. Un cinéma à l’épreuve du monde. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 161-162.
-
Poetic cinema: a genealogy of the ‘poetic’ in Soviet and post-Soviet critical discourse Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Olga Kim
ABSTRACT The term ‘poetic cinema’ is common in Russo-Soviet critical discourse, but has meant different things at different times. This article demonstrates how ‘poetic cinema’ has two overlapping, but nonetheless distinct meanings: on the one hand, according to Russian Formalism, the term ‘poetic’ connotes a defining feature specific to art; on the other hand, it implies an expressive mode characterised
-
Haptic visuality, sensation and politics in Eisenstein’s film theory Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-03-28 Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco
ABSTRACT In this article, I analyse the convergences between haptic visuality and Sergei Eisenstein’s film theory, in particular his ideas on rhythm, sensorial thought, organic unity, pathos and ecstasy in order to consider the extent to which they constitute the core of a ‘cinema of sensation’ that, for Eisenstein, serves a very important political drive. Simultaneously positioned at the core of avant-garde
-
Shaping the genealogy of the Soviet intelligentsia in two film adaptations of the 1960s Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Maria Mayofis
ABSTRACT This article traces the role of the intelligentsia as represented in the cinema of the Thaw through two Soviet films from 1960: The Blind Musician by Tat’iana Lukashevich and The Northern Story by Evgenii Andrikanis. Both films were adaptations of literary texts: a short novel by Vladimir Korolenko originally published in 1898, and a novella by Konstantin Paustovskii published in 1938 respectively
-
Editorial Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Birgit Beumers
(2022). Editorial. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 1-1.
-
Alisa Seleznёva, a girl alone in outer space: rethinking gender, family and state in late-Soviet children’s science fiction and animation Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Aleksandra Shubina
ABSTRACT This article investigates the potential of children’s literature and animation in late-Soviet Russia to subtly reflect the ways in which state ideology and public attitudes towards societal development and social institutions transform, merge with, mimic and come into conflict with one another. The article focuses on a comparative analysis of two Soviet children’s science-fiction texts about
-
The transformation of ‘divisive’ daughters-in-law in Central Asian cinema Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Jamile Satybaldiyeva
ABSTRACT The article explores the transformation of images of daughters-in-law in Central Asian cinema of the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The images of daughters-in-law (kelin) are laden with cultural, social and political meanings that reveal various aspects of identity and gender politics and state ideology in the Central Asian states. The kelins are seen as important symbols of the continuation
-
The phenomenon of Partisan Cinema: alternative film production in Kazakhstan (Appendix: A Manifesto) Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Serik Abishev, Evgenii Lumpov, Inna Smailova
ABSTRACT This article explores the phenomenon of Partisan Cinema in Kazakhstan in the 2010s in a historical and social context. It explains the funding situation in Kazakhstani film production in order to contextualise the rise of an independent cinema, and places the emergence of socially engaged cinema in the context of early Kazakh experiences with film in the 1930s and the Kazakh New Wave of the
-
Psychomotor aesthetics: movement and affect in modern literature and film Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Anna Toropova
(2022). Psychomotor aesthetics: movement and affect in modern literature and film. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 84-85.
-
Cinemasaurus: Russian film in contemporary context Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema Pub Date : 2022-02-07 Rachel Morley
(2022). Cinemasaurus: Russian film in contemporary context. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 82-84.